The reason for this ideological harmonic convergence is simple enough to see:
in spite of Obama’s alleged commitment to "change," so far our foreign
policy is Bushism without Bush – a policy of perpetual
war, albeit without the Bushian bells
and whistles.

Not that the administration will ever admit to this essential continuity.
In a move that underscores the stylistic differences between the new crowd
and the old, the Pentagon recently issued a diktat
to its minions, notifying them that "this administration prefers to avoid
using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT]. Please use ‘Overseas
Contingency Operation.'”

Appearances are everything to this administration, whose top guns are understandably
sensitive to the charge, coming from the more principled element of the Democratic
Party base, that the revolution has been betrayed. The president’s defenders
note that none of this should come as any surprise to those who listened to
what Obama actually said on the campaign trail, and they’re
rightabout that: he
constantlycharged
that the Bushies had "neglected" the Afghan front and that we were
fighting "the wrong war." Once in office, he would fix that, he
vowed – and that is precisely
what he is doing.

Yet one has to note that the Bushian terminology at least had the virtue of
honesty.
This new crowd, which supposedly disdains all ideology and is devoted to a streamlined,
hard-as-nails "pragmatism," is slipperier than a greased-up eel in
a frying pan. "Overseas Contingency Operation" indeed!

The euphemism is comical, yet not totally meaningless. Within it lies a hint
of what the Obamaites intend, or, at least, what they say they intend.
Being sensitive barometers of the political zeitgeist, the Obamaites are perfectly
aware of the war-weariness
of the American people. Even if you call it an "overseas contingency operation,"
a war in these hard times is likely to grate much harder on people’s nerves
as they listen to the latestnews
from the Af-Pak front. Yet to call the current war a contingency is to imply
that there’s going to be an end to it, and, not only that, but that the end
is in sight, if still a
decade or so off.

This, one assumes, is progress of a sort, but one has to wonder: what is the
administration’s current overseas operation contingent on? Or, in plain
English, what event, or series of events, would cause us to declare victory
and come home?

The answer to this question is lost in a maze that would baffle the
Minotaur, tangled up in so many contingencies, what-ifs, and weasel words
that it would take an analyst of Alexandrian
abilities to cut the Gordian
Knot of this conundrum.

In taking a stab at it, however, one is forced to conclude that the term "Long
War" is forbidden precisely on account of its accuracy. Whatever contingencies
will bring America’s post-9/11 madness to an end lie in the far future. We ought
to take seriously that U.S. general who recently said we’re preparing to stay
in Iraq for
the next decade or so, regardless of the 2011 cutoff point stipulated in
the recently signed U.S.-Iraq status
of forces agreement [.pdf].

I empathize with those who had hope for a significant change in American foreign
policy, yet the evidence that we are making an even bigger
military footprint in the Middle East and Central Asia seems irrefutable. The
one
hope left is that the Obamaites will really crack down on the Israelis,
who are intent on building
new settlements with your
tax dollars, and who are movingsteadily
toward a particularly
nasty form of ultra-nationalism,
one that represents a direct threat to U.S. interests in the region.

The chances that an Israeli provocation will lead to a full-scaleIranian assault
on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq are quite high at the moment, and that is one
big reason for increased strains on the "special relationship." The
Obama administration seems headed for a showdown with the government of Prime
Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, a hard-liner who, in the context of his ferociously rightist
cabinet, is a relative moderate. With Avigdor
Lieberman, the Israeli version of George
Lincoln Rockwell, in charge of the Foreign Ministry, it looks like we’re
going to be in for a long, bumpy ride.

Yet the Obama administration, in making
a big issue out of the settlements, is paving the way for Israeli "concessions"
that still leave Tel Aviv with de facto control over large swathes of Palestinian
land. Even minus the settlements, the peace plan one envisions coming from the
Obamaites leaves Israel lording it over a demilitarized
Palestinian castrato-state, one that acts as a kind of human shield for Israel’s
expansionist designs. The Israelis need only agree to stop torturing their Palestinian
helots quite so harshly – perhaps by letting food
and medicine into Gaza – in order to successfuly goad the U.S. into provoking
a war with the Iranians. The U.S. stance on Iran is reportedly Obama’s chief
bargaining chip in
his testy negotiations with Tel Aviv – a price that, if it is ever exacted,
will be paid in blood, American and Iranian (but never Israeli).

The fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy – a policy based on the grandiose
delusion that the U.S. can and must retain hegemonic power in the world
in order to ensure its own security – haven’t changed a single iota. According
to our commander in chief, that fanatics are plotting against America in a cave
somewhere in Waziristan is reason
enough to launch a decades-long occupation and nation-building project in
the wilds of Central Asia. As long as these baddies find a "safe haven"
for their plotting, there is no country in the world that’s safe from a future
as a battle zone. This is the Bush doctrine of preemptive
warfare carried to its logical, Bizarro World conclusion: in keeping the
peace we must invade and conquer the world.

What has changed, however, is the willingness of the American people to put
up with an "overseas contingency operation" without end. Therefore
the Obamaites have to tread very carefully, even as they carry out the same
old policies under a freshly minted rubric, mindful that the natives are already
getting restless, albeit not quite yet as restless as Ted Rall.

I remember way back when Rall’s rhetoric was considered radical; the Iraq war,
he averred, was "a war waged under false pretexts by a fictional coalition
led by an ersatz president." In 2003 and thereabouts, when news announcers
had yet to take off their flag lapel buttons and Phil Donahue was getting unceremoniously
ousted from the airwaves, Rall was accurately calling
the Iraq war as lost and demanding
Bush’s prosecution as a war criminal. In those dark days, Rall’s views – quite
aside from his style
– were considered beyond-the-pale radicalism. Today, we have members of Congress,
including
the speaker, calling for what amounts to a war crimes tribunal to sit in
judgment on Bush administration officials. Yesterday’s radicalism, in this instance,
is today’s growing consensus.

Similarly, I believe, Rall’s
recent piece calling for the president to resign on account of his serial
betrayals, especially on the foreign policy front, will prove to be a prophetic
reading of the zeitgeist to come. I agree with Katrina
van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who, in an
interview with Antiwar.com’s Scott Horton, compared Obama to another Democratic
president with a liberal domestic agenda who got bogged down in a no-win, no-sense
war: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The War Party, driven from power by the Bush defeat, has regrouped and had
a makeover: in their new guise as nation-building humanitarians, they’re not
making war – they’re conducting an Overseas Contingency Operation. Instead of
the damn-the-torpedoes
approach taken by his predecessor, this president is not averse to euphemism
and what passes for subtlety in pursuing the very same ends. Yet the real contingency
here is the patience of the American people, which is fast coming to an end.
How long the Obamaites can delay the inevitable revolt is a matter of pure speculation.
However, I’m willing to bet it’ll be sooner than they fear.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is editor-at-large at Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].
View all posts by Justin Raimondo